James Cameron thinks 'Canadians need to wake up'

By Katherine Monk, Postmedia NewsSeptember 7, 2012

Interview with James Cameron: You can take the boy out of Canada. But you can’t take the Canada out of the boy: Forty years after leaving the Great White North, James Cameron is still infused with a sense of social responsibility that continues to motivate everything from his personal causes to his creative oeuvre. Yet, the most successful director in the history of motion pictures says everything he loves about his home and native land is going the way of the dodo. “I get the strong feeling, watching it from afar, that Canada is not the place I left 40 years ago,” says Cameron over the phone from Los Angeles. .You can take the boy out of Canada. But you can’t take the Canada out of the boy: Forty years after leaving the Great White North, James Cameron is still infused with a sense of social responsibility that continues to motivate everything from his personal causes to his creative oeuvre.

Yet, the most successful director in the history of motion pictures says everything he loves about his home and native land is going the way of the dodo.

“I get the strong feeling, watching it from afar, that Canada is not the place I left 40 years ago,” says Cameron over the phone from Los Angeles.

“I feel Canada has been coasting along fine on international goodwill as being the kind, safe neighbour to the United States, being environmentally conscious and so on. But I don’t see that consciousness now, and I think Canadians need to wake up.”

Cameron points directly at the oil sands as a national point of shame, as well as our reneging on climate accords we signed before international bodies – to say nothing of the current pipeline debacle unfolding across the shale slopes of the Rockies.

“I’m still very committed to raising awareness about the dangers of climate change at time when there is all this denial and disinformation machinery designed to confuse people and create doubt — on an issue about which there is no doubt in the scientific community,” says the man who recently ventured to the bottom of the ocean floor in a solo submarine.

“We are facing the biggest challenge the human species has ever faced. And we’re all going to have to work together to solve it. The tar sands are not helping: It’s the dirtiest oil out there. You could fill your Prius (hybrid) with tar sands gasoline and it would have a bigger carbon footprint than filling a Humvee with non-tar sands gasoline.”

Cameron’s quest for social responsibility extends far beyond the realm of the personal and informs every mega-picture he’s ever made, whether it’s the notion of nature’s healing and holistic potency in Avatar, or the thread of class-based survival explored — through grand production spectacle — on Titanic, which is about to have its most recent release on home video in 3D.

The new Titanic 3D hits stores September 10 and Cameron says even so many years after he wrapped production with Leo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in the Baja, he’s still on the Titanic odyssey.

“It’s been a pretty long journey with Titanic, including three expeditions to the wreck, and the challenge of converting it to 3D, which has kept it fresh for me. But I did give myself a break from it for about five years before doing the 3D version,” says Cameron, who took time off his writing duties on Avatar 2 and 3 to chat up the new home entertainment release.

“I don’t think I’m a different person than I was when I made it. I think with the same script, I would have shot it the same way now. I have no misgivings about the movie creatively at all… although it’s been interesting to analyze the movie frame-by-frame. I see the mistakes I made, to the point of saying ‘I can’t believe we got away with that in a movie that won the Best Picture Oscar!’ ”

Ask Cameron what made Titanic such a lasting success and he says he’s still processing.

“That’s the big question, isn’t it? And a lot of people have spent a lot of time thinking about the main attraction: I just found a book on my shelf by a bunch of PhDs writing about the Titanic, and I think they all got a little piece of it, but it’s like the three blind men and the elephant: It means different things to different people,” he says.

“Some are attracted to the young love story, and Leo had fans among the girls at the time, but he doesn’t even look like that anymore, but there’s the story of doomed love. No matter how great a love or a romance may be, it must end at some point, which is a metaphor for life in general.

“And then, there’s the historical side of Titanic, which has always had metaphorical power: What happens when you confront your fate and your doom when something so unimaginable happens. The hubris, the arrogance…. It’s all a timeless kind of parable. I could ramble on about why it worked so broadly and in so many markets, but it boils down to a human story and everyone felt the same connection to it.”

For Cameron, connecting with his audience is the first priority of creation, which is why he’s not afraid of approaching what he himself calls “cliché.”

“When you do a film that appeals to certain universals, you always run the risk of being criticized for being cliché. That’s the danger of working in archetype.”

Cameron says he’s not perturbed by the label. “If you want to reach the most people, you have to go into territories that are considered cliché. After all, Avatar was a story that was familiar to people: The stranger in a strange land who falls in love with the princess and ends up fighting against his own people… But it’s all about the details of how you realize it visually and the specifics of the character that will set it apart.”

And as far as destiny goes, Cameron says he’s never really felt like he was “destined” to become the most successful filmmaker of his generation, racking up billions in combined receipts and creating the two biggest grossing pictures of all time in Avatar and Titanic.

“It’s a valid question — considering the way things have turned out. But I can’t think of a moment that I ever thought that way. I mean, if you watch Patton, the conceit of that movie was that Patton felt the mantle of history upon him. And the ones who do that and are successful are vindicated. The ones who aren’t are lined up in an insane asylum,” he says.

“For me it’s about finding a challenge that will keep it fresh. To think about the other movies I’ve made would be crippling. So you can’t dwell on it too much,” he says.

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